HTC’s financial report claims that the company’s business operations took a hit in Q1 2012 for the second consecutive time.

The company’s consolidated revenues for Q1 2012 stand at $2.29 billion. The gross margin was 25.03 percent, which is a 2.08pp on-quarter drop and 4.22pp on-year drop.

HTC’s CEO Peter Chou attributed the drop to strong iPhone 4S competition in the US. Chou confirmed that the company will launch its LTE and HSPA+ supporting, One-branded smartphones via AT&T and T/Mobile as well as LTE supporting EVO with Sprint Nextel in Q2.

Although the LTE and HSPA+ charge should increase the company’s market share in the US, Chou conceded that it is impossible for HTC to retake the dominant market share it once had there. On the other hand, the company has done quite well in Europe and Asia and expects further growth in these regions, particularly China.

Blizzard is experiencing something that they really have not seen before with World of Warcraft, which is a downturn in subscribers. In the satellite TV business and cell phone business this is called subscriber “churn,” and this is something new that Blizzard is dealing with. Blizzard believes that the churn is due in part to WoW players becoming more skilled at the game and not as engaged to ongoing playing once they have completed the latest expansion pack.

To address the issue Blizzard will be speeding up development so that there is not such a long period between expansion packs. By delivering more content to players faster, it is believed that this is the best strategy to keep players engaged and playing the game.

Whether speeding up development means less content per expansion pack, this is anyone’s guess. We suspect, however, that shorter timelines could contribute to less content per expansion pack; but that is unconfirmed and remains to be seen. There is no announcement describing how Blizzard intends to space out the release of these expansion packs, but we expect to hear more about this soon.